As I sit down to write this article, I can literally feel a rush of emotions surging through my body. A similar feeling is experienced when you sense a lunker stalking your lure, or for you non-fisherman, the excitement that’s felt when your team is on the 1 yard line looking to punch it in for a victory.
What I’m talking about, as aptly described in the title of this article, is FishAddix.com – an up-and-coming fishing based community website. I may be throwing around the phrase “up-and-coming,” because the site has been live for over a year. However, if you had a side by side comparison of the site in its infancy and the site as it is today – you wouldn’t recognize them as one in the same. The leaps and bounds taken by the management team can only be compared to the space race of the 1960’s. It’s as if JFK himself challenged the FishAddix staff to make the best possible fishing website in the shortest period of time on a budget that seemed like pennies. One year later, we sit on the verge of a launch, anticipating the catastrophic explosion that will send the website into every house on the planet and make FishAddix.com a household name. If you have made the journey to the website recently, it’s a hard fact to deny. Every day the FishAddix staff takes strides toward making the site a better, more efficient experience… and it shows.
The pride and joy of FishAddix.com would have to be the ever-growing database of fishing locations around the country in combination with its user defined fishing reports. The site has been masterfully engineered to a point where every user entry makes the site better. There is no waiting around for site updates or sending emails to an unattended inbox. The cold hard truth is that – when you create a fishing report – the site gets better. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its idiosyncrasies or subtle nuances, but everything does. Case in point: Einstein’s hairdo.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you’ve just wrapped up your day fishing – you stroll on home and go to FishAddix.com to create your fishing report. You search the lake by country and state, type in the name and a list of possible entries populates. The lake hasn’t been entered you say? You can take it upon yourself to add your fishing location – Wikipedia style. After entering several categories including the name, location, and fish found at the lake, you click the “Put it on the Map!” button. The site uses your previous entries and automatic synchronization with googlemaps to find the lake. You confirm that it’s the right location and Presto, you’ve created a new location. As an added bonus, this location is automatically linked to your followed locations where you can enter and see if anyone else has posted a fishing report at the same location. Now before you go fishing the next time, you can hop on the site, search for other fishing reports, and get a good handle on what you can expect before you leave the house. It’s like having every fisherman make a personal entry into your marble composition fishing log (come on, you know you have one). Currently in development (or in a queue of items to be developed) is a process that will make these searches even more efficient and user friendly. I can’t tell you about it here because we don’t want to be inundated with emails about the process and it’s currently regarded as a trade secret.
The customization seems endless: photos, videos, comments, blogs, hot spots, friends, notifications and trends are all available for your viewing and using pleasure. As if this wasn’t enough, a recently added “Addix Points” system and leader board has been introduced to keep track of all our members. Points are assigned based on your user entries and activity on the site and a leader board is published so you can compare with your friends.
Not interested with keeping up with the Jones’? Well FishAddix conveniently keeps track of all your personal stats too. Have a look at your largest catch, average catch, and species of catches, all sortable by time and location. There’s also a personal information section for all you social butterflies out there.
According to a study in 2006, U.S. anglers alone spent over $40 billion on fishing trips, equipment, licenses, and other items (http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/article_d142b57c-1b6d-5ae4-b0bf-d55dd5068c44.html). If you contributed to this total, even by the smallest margin, FishAddix.com should be your new home. How many times have you gone to the store and picked up a smorgasbord of tackle that you didn’t set out to buy in the first place. The monetary savings alone of doing some research on the site would be worth signing up. Add to the fact that the site is absolutely free and what you have is a no-brainer. A one-stop-shop for your fishing needs and a place to tell your stories amongst friends, because let’s be honest, the kids and your neighbors are tired of hearing your tall tales. Well guess what… we aren’t!!!
The flow of information on the site is truly staggering. As of this article, the top 25 anglers on the site have already caught almost 1800 fish (which I easily calculated using the nifty leader board I mentioned above), not to mention the bevy of blogs, fishing reports, pictures, and videos to be had. The beauty of the site is its simultaneous simplicity and usefulness. And in the crosshairs, the FishAddix team aims to keep streamlining the results, the input, the shared database of knowledge, and the experience.
The possibilities are endless for the site and we’ve already managed to create a To-Do List that will keep a web page design company busy until the turn of the century. The key is that the men (and women) behind the curtains are people like you and me… fishermen. One could say that it’s a site designed for the people, by the people. Amateur and avid anglers alike can join and find new tips and strategies or just to find a home where your outdoorsmanship is appreciated. The site is over 1500 members strong and the atmosphere is that of a large party boat with all your friends. The active members are so commonplace you’ll think you’ve been fishing alongside them your whole life.
The ultimate goal for the website is world domination. Not the Napoleon kind, but the kind where you can sign into the website, search any lake in the world, and fish it like you’ve been fishing it for years. Only one question remains…. will you be a part of the revolution?
Visit http://www.fishaddix.com/ …… and Get Addicted!!!
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